Genetics and genomics of complex traits

Virtually all human traits that vary between individuals have unknown genetic and non-genetic factors that contribute to the observed variation – they are called ‘complex traits’. We discover specific factors that explain individual differences between people across a wide range of complex traits; such as risk to common disease, anthropomorphic traits such as height, genomic traits such as gene expression and gene methylation. The team is interested in quantifying and dissecting trait variation in the population into genetic and non-genetic factors, and in identifying specific gene variants that contribute to genetic variation. We use large datasets and sophisticated statistical models to address fundamental questions about genetic variation in the human population and to predict individual complex trait phenotypes using genetic and genomic data.

Traineeships, honours and PhD projects include

• Quantification of pleiotropy for complex traits in the human genome
• Estimation of genetic variation from whole genome sequence data